So What Are you Reading?: Generations
- Thread starter captcalhoun
- Start date
Ouch. Have you read any of Dynamite's recent Bond stuff?They seem to have pretty good reviews.
The latest episode of Literary Treks has been published: Literary Treks 258: Inaccurate Operas Will Be Performed of This Day!, all about Klingon Empire: A Burning House by Keith R.A. DeCandido.
I'm currently reading New Earth, Book 3: Rough Trails by L.A. Graf.
I'm currently reading New Earth, Book 3: Rough Trails by L.A. Graf.
M
marlboro
Guest
Bloodthirst by J.M. Dillard
"Yoshi - that's the man, Adams says - was face down with his carotid slit. Do you have any idea how fast blood would drain from a body under those circumstances?"
"Approximately-" Spock began.
Kirk looked up from his cup of coffee in dismay, but McCoy came to the rescue. "Chrissake, man, when are you going to learn when are you going to learn to recognize a rhetorical question? Suffice it to say that there would have been enough blood to swim in."
"Doctor." Kirk set down his mug.
"At least to go wading," McCoy persisted.
lol. Dillard writes a very good McCoy, imo. The book is worth a read for Bones fans for that reason alone.
The TOS Dillard books remind me of the DS9 Relaunch in some ways. There is a real focus on fleshing out new secondary characters. Heck, there's even a mention of an Andorian fertility crisis.
Problems with the book: the vampirism parallels should have been pared back.She did a good job of giving medical explanations to explain the disease's effects, but my credulity can only be stretched so far. The disease should have been put on the backburner halfway through the book, to give room for the conspiracy storyline to grow, I think.
The new characters are interesting and 3 dimensional, but they leave virtually no room for Kirk, Spock, or any of the regulars with the exception of McCoy. I think they should have taken a step back at the halfway point, too.
The ending was a bit of a dud too, unfortunately.
Silliest thing: Nosferatu dressed in a Holocaust Cloak strolling around the Enterprise for three days and nobody can spot him. What?
Silly, but inexplicably cool: Quince Waverleigh and Old Yeller.
"Yoshi - that's the man, Adams says - was face down with his carotid slit. Do you have any idea how fast blood would drain from a body under those circumstances?"
"Approximately-" Spock began.
Kirk looked up from his cup of coffee in dismay, but McCoy came to the rescue. "Chrissake, man, when are you going to learn when are you going to learn to recognize a rhetorical question? Suffice it to say that there would have been enough blood to swim in."
"Doctor." Kirk set down his mug.
"At least to go wading," McCoy persisted.
lol. Dillard writes a very good McCoy, imo. The book is worth a read for Bones fans for that reason alone.
The TOS Dillard books remind me of the DS9 Relaunch in some ways. There is a real focus on fleshing out new secondary characters. Heck, there's even a mention of an Andorian fertility crisis.
Problems with the book: the vampirism parallels should have been pared back.She did a good job of giving medical explanations to explain the disease's effects, but my credulity can only be stretched so far. The disease should have been put on the backburner halfway through the book, to give room for the conspiracy storyline to grow, I think.
The new characters are interesting and 3 dimensional, but they leave virtually no room for Kirk, Spock, or any of the regulars with the exception of McCoy. I think they should have taken a step back at the halfway point, too.
The ending was a bit of a dud too, unfortunately.
Silliest thing: Nosferatu dressed in a Holocaust Cloak strolling around the Enterprise for three days and nobody can spot him. What?
Silly, but inexplicably cool: Quince Waverleigh and Old Yeller.
I finished up the last couple stories in ST: Voyager: Distant Shores
Bottomless by Ilsa J. Bick:
This one was pretty good, I liked that it focused so much on one of the Equinox crew members. I never thought about how they just kind of disappeared after joining the Voyager crew, but it does make sense that there would be some difficulties for them. I found it a little funny that we ended up with two stories back to back that addressed this.
Da Capo al Fine by Heather Jarman
I liked that it was a sequel to Coda, and it was cool the way the story revisited episodes where Janeway was in a near death situation or in the case of Year of Hell, kind of did die.
Bottomless by Ilsa J. Bick:
This one was pretty good, I liked that it focused so much on one of the Equinox crew members. I never thought about how they just kind of disappeared after joining the Voyager crew, but it does make sense that there would be some difficulties for them. I found it a little funny that we ended up with two stories back to back that addressed this.
Da Capo al Fine by Heather Jarman
I liked that it was a sequel to Coda, and it was cool the way the story revisited episodes where Janeway was in a near death situation or in the case of Year of Hell, kind of did die.
Posted my review of TNG #32: Requiem by Michael Jan Friedman and Kevin Ryan. Rather enjoyed this one!
Just started reading TNG: Death in Winter for an upcoming episode of Literary Treks!
Just started reading TNG: Death in Winter for an upcoming episode of Literary Treks!
M
marlboro
Guest
I have one major complaint about Requiem: why the heck was Picard transported to that particular place and time?
Why was McCoy transported through the Guardian to a place and time where his actions could wipe out the whole Federation? Maybe Spock's theory there about currents in time drawing travelers to important moments could apply here too.
In retrospect, I'd have liked that. But it would require Richard Arnold being more open-minded about the novels than he was.
M
marlboro
Guest
Hmm...maybe.
In "City" I never assumed that the Guardian chose a time for McCoy. It was quickly scanning through Earth's past, and Bones just randomly jumped in. There are countless times and places he could have ended up where he could have had a major impact on the timeline. He could have popped into 1492 and strangled Columbus, or 1500 years earlier and pulled Jesus off the cross or millions of other "A Sound of Thunder" type things.
Kirk and Spock specifically chose an approximate date that they wanted to visit. The "eddies" theory is interesting, but since Spock doesn't elaborate it comes across as a bit of a handwave. I mean, why couldn't Kirk ask the Guardian for an exact location? Because it would ruin a great story.
Let's assume that Spock's theory is correct. Is the Cestus massacre one of these eddies? Let's say that it is. That might explain why Picard was sent there of all places and times in the universe. But what are the odds of it happening just before he's about to negotiate a treaty with the Gorn? Even if we stipulate that Cestus is a time eddie, it still strains credulity to have this improbable event occur just in time for Picard to learn an important life lesson that he can immediately put to use. It would be like having McCoy learn a valuable surgical skill in 1930s Chicago that would allow him to defeat the critters in Operation: Annihilate.
But maybe there is such a thing as destiny, or some divine hand (besides Apollo's) that controls fate in the Trek universe.
Anyways... my complaint about Requiem could have been solved with a line or two about the time machine being activated via telepathy or something. Picard has the Gorn negotiations on his mind, gets too close to the WABAC machine and whammo.
Still an entertaining book despite my gripe.
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M
marlboro
Guest
Excellent episode. We need more hillbilly Klingon impersonations. Is there any way to sort your podcasts by specific book titles?
That's not at all what I meant, or what Ellison meant. The whole point of Ellison's "currents of time" model is that even if you jump into time fairly randomly, you'll naturally be drawn toward some key event in proximity to your entry point, some point where the currents of probability converge -- which is why McCoy, and then separately Kirk and Spock, were drawn to New York City and Edith Keeler's mission when they arrived in 1930, rather than in Outer Mongolia or the middle of the Pacific.
Thousands of works of fiction are about improbable coincidences like that. Like, what are the odds that Marty McFly accidentally went back in time to just the right place and time to accidentally prevent his parents from meeting the way they were supposed to and jeopardize his own existence? The reason it happens is because the events where such significant convergences don't happen aren't as much worth telling stories about. Fiction has a selection bias for the most interesting and unusual situations, which means it tends to focus on improbable situations. If Picard had gone through time to some random event that had no impact on his life, then probably nobody would've written a novel about it.
M
marlboro
Guest
I get it what you're saying, but did MJF do that? No. Picard has a meeting with the Gorn coming up so when he falls assbackwards into a time machine, of course he's going to end up at Cestus 3 a hundred years in the past. The time eddies theory works as a way to explain why two accidental time travellers might end up in approximately the same place, but not why they end up in a place that will be important to them.
Marty went back to that date in 1955 because Doc set the car for that date. It was the day that he originally came up with the idea of time travel. If MJF had written BTTF Marty would have hopped in a random car and been transported back to 1955 just in time to get his parents to hook up.
Marty went back to that date in 1955 because Doc set the car for that date. It was the day that he originally came up with the idea of time travel. If MJF had written BTTF Marty would have hopped in a random car and been transported back to 1955 just in time to get his parents to hook up.
All I'm saying is, countless stories are driven by arbitrary coincidence in order to make them personally meaningful to the characters. One of the more annoying drawbacks of modern serialized television is that in shows with a case-of-the-week format, the cases of the week always have to be coincidentally relevant to whatever personal drama the main characters are dealing with at that point in the season's arc, over and over again. Heck, that pattern got so blatant on Fringe that the characters even remarked on the pattern of coincidence in one episode, although no justification was ultimately given for it.
M
marlboro
Guest
I'm more than willing to meet an author half-way on this stuff, but they have to give me something. Technobabble, random Spock theory, Norns - anything.
Those Dickensian coincidences (usually) only work if your Charles Dickens.
Those Dickensian coincidences (usually) only work if your Charles Dickens.
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